Effa — How They’ve Grown
Description: A previously unpublished short story from the online collection that takes place around the time of Part 5 Volume 4. Lutz and Tuuli come home out of nowhere with news about Effa’s job. They explain that she received permission to visit the temple, though Kamil wasn’t quite so lucky. He sure has grown up fast!
Author’s Note: This short story takes place at almost the same time as the one that follows it. Both focus on when Effa was permitted to visit the temple.
“Mom, Kamil, I’m home!”
“And I’m here too.”
One afternoon, when spring’s baptism ceremony was drawing near, Tuuli arrived at our door with Lutz in tow. Kamil and I were preparing food when we saw them, and our eyes widened in surprise.
“Can Lutz join us for dinner?” Tuuli asked.
“Yes, of course,” I said. “But didn’t the two of you tell me you were too busy to come home?”
Because of all the visiting merchants, both the Plantin and Gilberta Companies were always overrun with orders around this time of year. Their workload started picking up toward the end of winter, and unless they had something major to report, it usually wasn’t until midway through autumn that Lutz and Tuuli came home.
“We need to speak about your job,” Tuuli explained to me. “Do you know how long Dad is gonna be?”
“He was working the morning shift, so he shouldn’t be long.”
“Okay. I’ll wait for him to get back, then. Should save me from having to explain the whole situation twice. Is that okay with you, Lutz?” Tuuli turned to him with a smile as she threw on an apron. She was going to help us prepare dinner.
“Yeah,” Lutz replied with a nod. “Not to mention, Mr. Gunther’s bound to ask the same questions. Better to wait and tell them both together.”
We had some time on our hands before Gunther was due to arrive, so Lutz stepped out to tell Karla he was going to spend the night at home.
I smiled. “It’s always a relief when you come home with your fiancé.” Tuuli was the most successful girl in our side of the city, so there was a chance she might get kidnapped if she wandered about on her own.
“Is that your way of saying the engagement’s set in stone?” Tuuli asked, washing the vegetables. She sounded a little worried to me.
“Yep. Lutz is a year younger than you, but he can pay the bride price, knows a lot about our family, and even walks you home. We couldn’t ask for more.”
Tuuli would come of age this summer. It was about time for her to start seriously looking for a partner, but she was exceptionally busy with her work as a leherl of the Gilberta Company. She was in a tough spot where she couldn’t really look for a partner among her colleagues or here in our poor neighborhood. Lutz was her only option.
Not too long ago, Gunther and I had gone over the engagement with Lutz’s parents. They thought Lutz was in the same predicament as Tuuli—too busy to find anyone on his own—and agreed that the pair should get married.
“We can schedule your marriage for right after Lutz comes of age,” I said. “Or we can wait until you’re both ready. We want to work around your jobs, of course.”
Tuuli was busy when all the merchants came to Ehrenfest, and Lutz went on long-distance trips every spring. Coming of age would probably change their workloads to some degree, so we saw nothing wrong with waiting for them both to settle into things.
“Marriage, coming of age... It just doesn’t feel real to me,” Tuuli muttered.
“Give it time. Once you start doing up your hair, get used to how your job changes, and prepare your new place with Lutz, it won’t feel as strange anymore.”
“I guess...”
Seeing her expression, realization washed over me. “Tuuli... is there someone else you like?”
“Well, um... There was someone. But I wasn’t nearly enough for them.”
She claimed that such emotions were behind her, but the heart wasn’t so simple. Her melancholic smile made me feel awful. She served the archduke’s adopted daughter, which was enough for anyone in the city. If anything hadn’t been “enough,” then it had to have been us, her family...
“That wasn’t your fault, Tuuli. I’m so proud of all you’ve accomplished. If anything brought you down, it was us.”
“No, that’s not what I meant. The person in question was interested in someone else, so... Yeah. We could never have been together. We didn’t suit each other at all. I can’t even imagine what it would have been like to be married to him.” Tuuli met my eye with a look of renewed determination. “Engagements are for parents to decide, and I know Lutz really well, so... I’m fine with this.”
Tuuli had put all of her focus into making Myne’s hairpins, so she hadn’t given marriage much thought at all. She had the appearance of a young woman who had already come of age but the concerns of a girl who hadn’t.
How was it for me, again?
I thought back to my own coming-of-age. Gunther had shown up and proposed to me every chance he got. He had shown up so much, in fact, that my dad said it was up to me to deal with him.
Back then, I was completely overwhelmed.
My lips curled into a smile, and that was when Gunther came back. Lutz was with him. As a girl, the very thought of marrying Gunther had seemed so strange to me, but now one of our daughters was about to come of age.
“You know, Tuuli...” I said in a hushed voice, “marriage seemed just as strange when Gunther first started proposing to me. I didn’t think we would ever end up together.”
“Dad would cry if he found out you said that.”
“Then let’s make it our little secret.”
“So, what’s all this about Effa’s job?” Gunther asked as we sat down to eat.
Tuuli exchanged a look with Lutz, then giggled. “Just the other day, there was a meeting in the temple. The Gilberta Company had to take orders for Lady Rozemyne’s new hairpin and clothes.”
As part of that process, Tuuli had gotten a chance to see her sister again. Myne looked more mature than ever, apparently—she had grown taller out of nowhere and seemed so much more like an adult.
“If that was what you wanted to tell me, then I already knew,” I said. “Gunther gave me an update after that incident at the west gate. He said she looked as though she was about to come of age!”
“Um, no she didn’t... Not even close. She barely looked ten years old.”
“Yeah,” Lutz chimed in. “She didn’t look out of place in her shin-length skirt, but that’s about the most I can say.”
In other words, Gunther had embroidered the truth.
“Sure, she looked young enough to have been newly baptized—she has for ages—but those skirts actually suit her now,” he protested. “Anyone would think she’s come of age!”
So he said, but I thought it better to trust Lutz and Tuuli. Gunther was always biased when it came to Myne.
“Well, enough of that,” Tuuli said. “To cut a long story short, Lady Rozemyne has grown a decent amount, and Mrs. Corinna thinks we should use more mature cloth for her clothes to reflect that. To that end, she wants Mom to come along as a Renaissance. We have the temple’s permission, so we want you to head there the day after tomorrow.”
“What?!”
I was so surprised that I didn’t even know what to say. I’d already known about the title, but it wasn’t every day that a commoner got to meet with the archduke’s adopted daughter. Gunther saw her twice a year at Hasse, and Tuuli took her hairpin orders, but I hadn’t seen my other daughter for a very long time.
I’m going to see Myne...?
“Meeting in the castle was out of the question, since you need to speak and act properly there, but they can overlook those things in the temple,” Tuuli explained. “The Gilberta Company intends to mediate, though, so you won’t be able to speak with her directly.”
I would need to settle for seeing Myne from a short distance away so that her noble guards wouldn’t get upset with me. Still, I was excited to see how much she had grown with my own eyes.
“Good for you, Effa,” Gunther said with a beaming smile, no less pleased than if this news were for him. I knew he felt guilty about having so many more chances to speak with Myne than I did.
“Would you thank Mrs. Corinna for me?” I asked Tuuli.
“Of course. Dress your best when the day comes. Oh, and here’s some rinsham.”
Tomorrow, I would go to my workshop and tell the foreman that I needed a day off. I wouldn’t need to worry about my request being refused as long as I explained that I was going to the temple as a Renaissance. Preparing for the temple was no small ask; I would need to fix up my best dress and wash my hair with rinsham.
Lutz beckoned to Kamil and said, “Kamil, there’s something I’ve gotta tell you.”
“Oh?”
Kamil rushed over to Lutz, his golden-brown eyes ablaze with excitement. He was the spitting image of Myne, which both warmed my heart and put a lump in my throat.
“You wanted to tour the workshop, right? I’m sorry to say, the temple won’t let you.”
“Aww! But I was reeeally looking forward to it!”
“They can’t allow unbaptized kids into the temple,” Lutz explained, shaking his head. “And as more nobles are going to be visiting the temple from this spring onward, a tour would put the Plantin Company in danger.”
As much as it pained me to see Kamil so disappointed, I was honestly relieved. Hearing that nobles would start frequenting the temple reminded me of when a noble from another duchy had shown up out of the blue, which had resulted in Myne being taken away from us. I wouldn’t crush my son’s dreams when he’d just resolved to follow in Myne’s footsteps and make books of his own, but as a mother, I wanted to keep him as far away from nobles as I could.
“This can’t be...” Kamil whined. “Dirk and Konrad said they couldn’t wait to show me around.”
“That’s enough, Kamil,” Tuuli said. “It isn’t Lutz’s fault. He did as much as he could to get you a tour. Not to mention, if you can’t accept the nobles’ decision even when they’ve gone out of their way to explain it, then you should give up on joining the Plantin Company at all.”
Kamil pursed his lips and fell silent.
Lutz patted his head and apologized. “I thought the temple wouldn’t mind, since we’re doing so much for the orphanage, and the people there seemed open to the idea when I first put it forward. It was the High Bishop who turned it down, which goes to show how real the danger must be. Don’t forget the charms she gave us.”
Myne was the High Bishop, but some of the temple’s priests knew she was a commoner, and she was only a figurehead for the archducal family. She couldn’t just do whatever she wanted.
Gunther nodded. “Lady Rozemyne’s devoted to protecting commoners from nobles. Back when a noble from another duchy was kicking up a fuss at the west gate, she sent her personal guards to help us without a second thought. If she thinks this is too dangerous for you, then we should believe her.”
He went on to recount what Myne had said when they’d reunited at the west gate. Kamil and I had heard the story more times than we could count, but Tuuli and Lutz were excited to hear it. They had been in a meeting at the temple when it all happened, so they had seen nobles rush out at her command.
“By that point, she was giving orders as naturally as a proper noble,” Lutz recalled.
“Her voice was so sharp!” Tuuli added. “I couldn’t believe it!”
Gunther nodded. “She sends Lord Damuel to the gate whenever we have noble trouble, so the men are always glad to see him.”
Kamil pursed his lips, bored, and trudged back to his seat. Then he glared at me, his cheeks puffed out in protest. “How come you’re allowed to go to the temple, Mom? It isn’t fair... I hate the High Bishop.”
I understood why he was throwing a tantrum, but I was so incredibly excited to see Myne up close again. “If you keep saying things like that, then you might stop getting all those new books. She’s the reason we get them, you know.”
The day had finally arrived. I went to the temple with the Gilberta Company and stood where I was told to, watching Myne from a respectful distance. She really had grown. Even her countenance had changed. Any traces of immaturity were gone, and she now wore the expression of an adult.
Back when she had lived with us, Myne had spent most of her time stuck in bed. I still remembered her sunken cheeks and pale skin, but her face looked much healthier now, and she had a considerably warmer complexion. Her glossy hair was well maintained, she wore fancy clothes, and a beautiful stone-decorated hair ornament sat beside the best hairpin Tuuli had made to date.
On top of everything else, the way Myne acted like a proper noble meant that nobody would ever suspect she was my daughter.
That said, she’s still the same in certain ways.
“Lady Rozemyne,” Tuuli said, “I see that your facial features have matured as well. Do you have anything in mind for your summer hairpin? Are there any particular flowers you would like me to use?”
“My tastes are largely the same, so you may choose whichever flowers will suit me as I am now. If possible, I would like them to match the dyed cloth.”
Tuuli had come a long way with her hairpins—they were so much fancier than when she had first started making them—but Myne’s smile and the way they spoke about her next order brought me straight back to old times. It helped that Myne’s voice was almost entirely unchanged. Next to Tuuli, she looked five—maybe six—years younger. Their age gap seemed much larger than before, but in my eyes, they were as close as they’d always been.
Feeling tickled that Myne was paying extra attention to me, I met her gaze and thought about what patterns and colors would suit her most. Preparing the best cloth I could was the one thing I could do for her right now.
I’ll need to knuckle down to make sure her summer clothes are finished in time.
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